Beta launch of a new Fixed-Odds Financials betting/Trading site

[MikeAtHome]

www. CityOdds.com

Hi,

CityOdds Ltd has recently launched its first Beta (1.1) Fixed-Odds Financial Betting Platform for customer use and feedback. I would be happy to hear views of players as to the good/bad points and look to make a number of staged improvements over the coming months. Were starting with the S&P 500, S&P Europe 350, USD/GBP and EUR/USD.

Please take a look. Feedback in this forum thread would be great. Its free to register and you can play with fun money or join Pay-to-Enter Pooled Fantasy Trading Leagues.

The real money betting is not activated at this stage.

Best of luck and I look forward to the feedback.

Mike
CityOdds Ltd

Home

 

[Baldwreck]

Mike
Had a quick look - as far as I could make out you are only offering end of day bets - is that right? If so this won't be for me.

Regards

 

[MikeAtHome]

Mike
Had a quick look - as far as I could make out you are only offering end of day bets - is that right? If so this won't be for me.

Regards

Hi,

On this launch yes. We shall be rolling out maturities up to 5 years. You'll find the longer maturities will be priced in a similar way to the listed options market.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[BinarySoft Chris]

Mike - the interface looks slick, but how does your service differ from BetOnMarkets / BetsForTraders?

 

[MikeAtHome]

Mike - the interface looks slick, but how does your service differ from BetOnMarkets / BetsForTraders?

Hi Chris,

BetOnMarkets appear to have longer term binaries, CityOdds shall be starting with the shortest term binaries (actually the toughest to manage!), settle down and then begin to roll out longer maturities.

There will be focus on graphical interactivity, ease of use, competitive pricing (we try to at least equal IG Index, the market leader in binaries, in comparable products). We also shall look to offer bespoke bets via our, yet to be activated, premium Service.

We shall stick to the range expiry but offer better bid/offer spread execution.

Have a go on the training groups or free leagues...

Cheers

Mike

 

[BinarySoft Chris]

Cool - so will it be purely "live quoted" products (like IG), or will there also be bets which are placed in advance of the start time? (the only type available on BetsForTraders / BetOnMarkets)

 

[MikeAtHome]

Cool - so will it be purely "live quoted" products (like IG), or will there also be bets which are placed in advance of the start time? (the only type available on BetsForTraders / BetOnMarkets)

You can bet at any time the market is open. You can also close the bet at any time after you have placed it during the trading hours. Bets left will expire worth either the maximum (win) or minimum (0) (lose) at the close of the trading day (9pm for the S+P 500 for example)

You cannot place bets for days in advance as yet.

All quotes are live.

 

[BinarySoft Chris]

A couple more questions:

1) What method of odds will the site use? (binary / decimal / fractional / all of these?)

2) What sort of spread are you aiming for (in binary points)?

Once your pricing algorithm is well tuned you also may want to consider MMing on the Tradefair exchange - they just launched a new range of 20 minute bets on the FTSE100.

 

[MikeAtHome]

A couple more questions:

1) What method of odds will the site use? (binary / decimal / fractional / all of these?)

2) What sort of spread are you aiming for (in binary points)?

Once your pricing algorithm is well tuned you also may want to consider MMing on the Tradefair exchange - they just launched a new range of 20 minute bets on the FTSE100.

1) There are a couple of ways of expressing odds; a) you can set the maximum value of a bet should the event occur, eg I want to receive £100 if the S+P 500 is between 1300 and 1310. CityOdds will price this bet and tell you how much you would need to pay (thats a bit like BetOnMarkets). OR you can enter your stake and see what maximum value would result should the event happen, eg I bet £10 that the S+P 500 closes between 1300 and 1310, if it does, the bet will expire worth, say £112.50, the same bet placed with £20 would return £225 etc.

2) You'll notice the bid/offer spreads are much narrower than for binaries (at IG for example)

Good call on the MM operation - I've a contact at TradeFair and am exploring this currently.

 

[BinarySoft Chris]

If you are live quoting though, how can you offer tighter than IG? Their spreads are usually around 3-4 points - surely it would be very difficult to make a profit if your spreads were only 1 or 2 points? (unless there is commission to pay as well?)

 

[MikeAtHome]

If you are live quoting though, how can you offer tighter than IG? Their spreads are usually around 3-4 points - surely it would be very difficult to make a profit if your spreads were only 1 or 2 points? (unless there is commission to pay as well?)

You can't write binaries on CityOdds, only buy them and sell what you have bought. This enables us to offer tighter spreads.

The price is all inclusive - wysiwyg

...you'll be surprised at the profit margin IG Group earn on IG Binaries!

 

[Baldwreck]

Hi,

On this launch yes. We shall be rolling out maturities up to 5 years. You'll find the longer maturities will be priced in a similar way to the listed options market.

Thanks for your reply.

Mike when do you expect to be able to offer longer dated bets? Very much looking forward to a platform that rivals the Betonmarkets offer.

 

[MikeAtHome]

Mike when do you expect to be able to offer longer dated bets? Very much looking forward to a platform that rivals the Betonmarkets offer.

Hi,

It will be a few months yet though the structure is pretty much set up. It will be a staged roll-out of products over 2008.

The next release will be the Real Money betting facility which should be switched on in about 6 weeks.

We shall be adding some interesting products to our longer term offering such as temperature and precipitation - retail sized weather derivatives - probably towards fourth quarter.

 

[Baldwreck]

Hi,

It will be a few months yet though the structure is pretty much set up. It will be a staged roll-out of products over 2008.

The next release will be the Real Money betting facility which should be switched on in about 6 weeks.

We shall be adding some interesting products to our longer term offering such as temperature and precipitation - retail sized weather derivatives - probably towards fourth quarter.

Mike - I guess that when you are ready with all the major indices and currency pairs on 10-15 day expiries I may well become a customer! Looking forward to it

 

[MikeAtHome]

Mike - I guess that when you are ready with all the major indices and currency pairs on 10-15 day expiries I may well become a customer! Looking forward to it

Great - I'd like to hear other comments if you have them and I'll try and incorporate over the coming months.

 

[riwf]

Hi Mike

Glad to see another binary betting company start up. Good that you're offering end-of-day bets as well as aiming to provide longer term settlements. Will you be offering 'lay' bets, as binarybet do, or will you be more similar to extrabet, where we can only 'back'? Also, do you envisage offering 'ladder' bets, i.e. where we can pick between different ranges within which the instrument might end, or, like betonmarkets and betsfortraders, will there only be one range we can bet within?

Cheers
RIWF

 

[gamascalper]

Great - I'd like to hear other comments if you have them and I'll try and incorporate over the coming months.

What will your policy towards profitable traders be ?

The main reason IG make so much money is that they actively shut down or disadvantage profitable traders.

 

[MikeAtHome]

Hi Mike

Glad to see another binary betting company start up. Good that you're offering end-of-day bets as well as aiming to provide longer term settlements. Will you be offering 'lay' bets, as binarybet do, or will you be more similar to extrabet, where we can only 'back'? Also, do you envisage offering 'ladder' bets, i.e. where we can pick between different ranges within which the instrument might end, or, like betonmarkets and betsfortraders, will there only be one range we can bet within?

Cheers
RIWF

Hi RWIF

No Laying is envisaged as yet - there would be some collateral issues. Though I quite like the BetsForTraders approach of offering "inside the range" and Outside the range" alternatives - that would allow a form of Lay. We shall be looking at this over the coming months.

In terms of ladders, I think we offer that already, you could, for example make a series of 5 bet ranges, each higher then the other and one of them may expire at its maximum value. Each bet range is fully flexible - from a few ticks to several points.

Thanks for the questions.

 

[MikeAtHome]

What will your policy towards profitable traders be ?

The main reason IG make so much money is that they actively shut down or disadvantage profitable traders.

Hi,

I've not seen any hard evidence of selective filtering by IG but then I've never had a problem (periods of winning and losing) using IG.

I'd hope to keep a level playing field for all if at all possible.

 

[MikeAtHome]

Hi,

I've not seen any hard evidence of selective filtering by IG but then I've never had a problem (periods of winning and losing) using IG.

I'd hope to keep a level playing field for all if at all possible.

Just to keep things up to date, we've had over 700 bets placed in our unique Trading Leagues since Feb 18th and 3,000 hits to the site. Some people are showing some pretty decent profits already.

Mike